Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb
historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global
hegemony, the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards a
showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She'll
do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be.

Buried deep inside Saturday's The New York Times was a grudging acknowledgement that the U.S.-armed "moderate" rebels in #Syria are using their U.S. firepower to back an #AlQaeda offensive, reports Robert Parry.

Noam Chomsky: "There is a global terrorism campaign, far beyond any
other. It’s Obama’s drone campaign. That’s a terrorist campaign of a
scale that has never existed in the past. This campaign is formally,
officially, explicitly aimed at people who the government suspects might
some day want to harm us. Might some day want to harm us. They have to
be killed, along with anybody else that’s standing around. I mean, if Al
Qaida or anyone came out with a campaign like that we would be beyond
scandalized, we’d probably nuke them. But that’s official policy
supported by the western countries. Now that’s a serious problem. Global
terrorism is a serious problem. This is right at the top. We could go
on and think of plenty of others."

All
have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when,
in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States,
aided by Germany and Nato.

This inversion of reality is so
pervasive that Washington's military intimidation of Russia is not news;
it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew
up with during the first Cold War. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to
get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the
devil...

domingo, 30 de octubre de 2016

The NHS is buying drugs from pharmaceutical companies in
India whose dirty production methods are fuelling the rise of superbugs,
and there are no checks or regulations in place to stop this happening.

The growth in superbugs –
infections which are resistant to antibiotics – is one of the biggest
public health crises facing the world today, and pollution in drug
companies’ supply chains is one of its causes. Yet the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
has established that firms with a history of bad practice and pollution
are supplying the NHS, and environmental standards do not feature in
NHS procurement protocols.

New tests on water samples taken outside pharmaceutical factories in
India which sell to the NHS found they contained bacteria which were
resistant to the antibiotics made inside the plants.

This suggests industrial waste containing active antibiotic
ingredients is being leaked into the surrounding environment. Studies
have shown
how this causes nearby bacteria to develop immunity to the drugs –
creating “superbugs” – and that those resistant bacteria then spread
around the world.

By Andre Vltchek
-“What could be the most striking image, one that would clearly
illustrate the destructive involvement of the United States in Sudan?” I
ask. “In short, what should I photograph, that could show the suffering
of the Sudanese people?”

“Let’s go and photograph what is left of the Al-Shifa factory,” I am told. “It is terrible, and truly symbolic.”

It is actually close to impossible to photograph just about anything
in Sudan. For right or wrong reasons, the government is paranoid.
Elaborate permits have to be issued for travelling outside the main
urban areas, and for taking photos and videos even inside the capital
city of Khartoum itself. If one dares to at all, one has to work fast
and clandestinely, even if one is not planning to do anything damaging
to Sudan.

By Graham Vanbergen – The UNHCR
says that by the end of the year it is estimated that half of the
population of Syria will be in need of aid. The Regional Response Plan
for Syrian refugees totals US$2.9 billion. The governments of Lebanon
and Jordan are also appealing for funds, asking for US$449 million and
US$380 million respectively. The humanitarian appeal for inside Syria is
for US$1.4 billion…

This all adds up to US$5 billion, the largest appeal in history.

The Syrian conflict is now well into its fifth year and the Syrian
agony continues without end in sight. The battle between the West and
its allies and the Syrian government rages with all of its complexities,
little understood by Western politicians and the media.

In the last few years the conflict has resulted in what is now
considered the worst humanitarian disaster in modern history. A third of
the population has been displaced internally, and some 3.8 million
Syrian refugees languish in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. The
United Nations and Arab League envoy to Syria put actual deaths due to the conflict at close to half a million as at April 2016.

Scott McClellan, who had been George W. Bush’s press spokesman, once
called the media “complicit enablers.” Coming from a senior official in
an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such
suffering, that description is a warning from history.

What is seldom mentioned, writes Pilger, is that both Mosul in Iraq and
Aleppo in Syria "would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if
Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003." (Photo:
AFP/Fadi Al-Halabi)

NATO is pushing all allies to deploy more troops and military equipment
to Russia’s borders, further ratcheting up tensions as the West prepares
for “its biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold
War,”

Inter-racial conflict in the US continues to escalate despite the fact
that a black president has been leading the country for 8 years. All of
the various ethnic groups that comprise American society, hoped that
Barack Obama would be able to “sew” together the fabric of a nation torn
by racial and social divisions, but racism is still on the rise.

While even #Montenegro and #Albania's
economic interests are taking a back seat in their desire to please the
Council of the European Union, the aspirations of another country to
join the #EU, #Serbia, are based on the need to strengthen its security, including through political and military cooperation with #Russia.

Global trade union leaders meeting in Panama have united in
condemnation of TiSA (the Trade in Services Agreement and CETA (the
Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement). The representatives, who
were attending a key ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation)
meeting, highlighted the risks that both #TiSA and #CETA pose to jobs and job security.

"USA Patriot Act, NDAA. America’s so-called war on terror, which it
has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our
freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a
battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the
USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws
completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American
citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way
as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the
map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will
continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected."

Noam Chomsky:
"Incidentally part of this [US] program I should say beginning actually
in 1943/44 was to undermine the anti-fascist resistance almost
everywhere – first in Italy. The first place where the U.S. and British
forces penetrated. The Italian resistance was holding down nearly half a
dozen German divisions and parts of Italy were beginning to reconstruct
an independent society and all of this was dismantled as the U.S. and
British forces moved through the peninsula and pretty much reinstated
the traditional order, including fascist sympathizers and similar
programs were adopted in other parts of occupied Europe as the United
States took over, including Germany. In fact Kennan at one point, top
postwar planner, said that the West ought to “wall off”, that’s his
phrase „wall off“ Western Germany from the eastern zone because the
danger or what they regarded as danger of the labor-based - what they
called communist - policies affecting the West, might affect them.

In Italy where there was a strong communist party and it was probably
gonna win the first 1948 election, the U.S. poured enormous resources
into making sure that they wouldn’t win that election, making it very
clear to Italians in many ways that if they allow the communists to take
control they’d be in deep trouble. One state department official said
the policies have to be clear enough, so that the dumbest wop can
understand; we are going to strangle them, unless they vote the right
way in their first free election. In Greece at first the British moved
in, and they faced a strong, they tried to crush the anti-fascist
resistance, they weren’t able to do it. The Americans came in to join
them and there was a major war, where probably a 160 000 Greeks were
killed. The end result was a restoration of something like the
traditional society, including fascist elements and the tragedy of
Greece goes on from there. Later in the 1960s there was a real outright
fascist coup in Greece, a military fascist coup strongly supported by
the U.S., continuously supported until it was overthrown by the Greeks
in the mid 70s."

Peter
Oborne analyses the outrageous decision by almost half of Labour MPs to
ignore the three-line whip called by Jeremy Corbyn to try to help end
the bloodshed in Yemen. These so-called Labour "moderates" refused to
back his cautious motion demanding that British support to Saudi Arabia
be suspended until a UN investigation had been carried out to look at
war crimes committed by all sides.

Oborne:

On Wednesday night, the British parliament sent the green light to Saudi Arabia
and its allies to carry on bombing, maiming and killing. I have
reported politics from Westminster for almost 25 years and can recall
few more shocking parliamentary events. ...

The Yemen vote demonstrates something that has been apparent ever since
the vote on 18 March 2003 to support the invasion of Iraq: the party of
war holds a majority in the Commons.

It comprises virtually all
of the Conservative Party and the Blairite wing of Labour. ... There is a
clear and demonstrable connection between the vote for war in Iraq,
opposition to an Iraq inquiry, support for the calamitous intervention
in Libya, and opposition to Jeremy Corbyn. ...

There is a telling
pattern here. For the past 15 years, parliament has been governed by a
cross-party consensus in favour of war. During that period, Britain has
undertaken three major foreign interventions, each one of them utterly
disastrous. In each one, military success was swiftly followed by
political and, ultimately, state failure.

Despite the hard-won experience of 15 years, there is still a parliamentary majority in favour of intervention.

There is an intimate connection between politicians who style themselves as moderate and neoconservative policies overseas. Very few parliamentarians opposed all these interventions. Jeremy Corbyn was among them and he has never been forgiven for it.

This week's Yemen vote demonstrates something apparent since the vote to
invade Iraq: the party of war holds a majority in the Commons

Whole
areas of American history have been erased from public consciousness.
Certainly most foreigners have never heard, for example, of the Ludlow
massacre of 1914, when industrialist John D Rockefeller sent in hundreds
of state troopers to slaughter the families of striking miners in
Colorado; or the Palmer raids of 1919, when the US attorney general and a
young J Edgar Hoover ordered the round-up of thousands of organised
labour activists for deportation under the pretence that they were
dangerous anarchists. I suspect most Americans don't know about this
history either.

Here Chris Hedges talks about even more recent
events that few are encouraged to remember. The Attica prison uprisings
of 1971 were crushed brutally to preserve America's industrialised
prison system, designed to keep vast swaths of the black population
disenfranchised and working in slavery conditions in these new concrete
plantations. The goal was to maintain the power of a white elite by
fostering among the wider white population a "fear of blackness".

#PropiedadIntelectual Sovereignty, patents and global agreements

Developing countries are not bound by the World Trade Organization to accept all intellectual property requirements imposed by the bilateral and regional treaties. This is indicated by a document from the Max Planck Institute prepared by specialists from 25 countries.

Wanted activist against TTIP and CETA

A campaign invites activists around the world to participate in actions against treaties.

The name of the action is eloquent enough to understand its meaning: "TTIP Game Over". This is called the critical campaign of direct action against TTIP and CETA activists involved in the different countries of the European Union. Thursday 27 October will be presented in Madrid Ecooo room where the slogan "Get wet against TTIP and CETA" will be announced some of the actions that will take place on 3,4 and 5 November in Brussels.

Anyone can be encouraged to take those actions. That is the idea of ​​"TTIP Game Over", create a community of activism where actions are decided by the activists themselves. In fact, one of the rules of the 'game' covers the ability to create your own group action and intervention.

The early November will be the second round of "TTIP Game Over", as the first took place from 11 to 15 July 2016, "while negotiations were held on the sidelines of citizenship," says the page of the organizers . During those days, different social movements and activists organized actions under the slogan "MAKE SOME NOISE" ( "Make some noise"). These acts consisted of urban batucadas, bands, alarm clocks, bells, whistles, pots and pans. All with the purpose of making as much noise as possible to be heard before the negotiators.

"The actions taken so far have been making these rounds of negotiations in an ordeal for negotiators who have seen the tranquility they enjoyed at the beginning has been transformed into an exhibition to the strong and creative criticism, which adds up support. At each meeting must deal with thousands of activists demanding them who demand transparency and the suspension of trading of TTIP and CETA not adopting ", say from the web.

Thursday, at 20: 00h in the Ecooo Lavapies (Madrid) room, will involve members of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace activists who carried out the protest actions of the KIO Towers and Crystal Palace in the campaign against CETA and TTIP.

The rules of the game:

1. Create your team- Create an affinity group.- Use the opportunity to create a group among your friends and acquaintances.

2. Plan an action or join other groups are already preparing proximity that one.- The box can send our ideas ttipgameover2mad@gmail.com

3. Action!- Come with us to Brussels and put them into action, within the agreed framework and above all, take pictures and record it!Nothing creates more noise than images.If you do not disponéis activists cameras also have video to be added.

4. Spread- Upload your photos and / or videos and send a copy to the web TTIP GAME OVER

5. Welcomes- We will celebrate all together with a big party on November 5.

In a few weeks we will know the outcome of the #Election2016, the most controversial ever. There is little doubt about the winner, which in all likelihood will be Hillary #Clinton.
National and international media do not fail to emphasize the safety
that the victory of the Democratic candidate spells. Polls show Clinton
ahead with an average of 5-6 points.

On both sides of the Atlantic, a battle is underway between largely
discredited "elites" and sometimes disreputable "nationalists," a
conflict over un-kept promises about the future and unsettling memories
of the past, writes Andrew Spannaus.

Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those
with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia – and with
careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington
Post. These organizations are known as the “liberal media.” They present
themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist.
They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT. And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny
the rights of countless women, including the right to life. The
drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the
very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction. They lie for a living.

It
has been said a number of times over the past year, that WWIII could be
on the horizon. Recent events and statements between Russia and the
United States have people believing it’s closer than ever. But is this
really the case? Should we be worried?

Since almost everything real and
important taking place is kept from the masses while we are distracted
by mainstream media and pop culture, it’s tough to say what is really
going on. But if we begin to look at the various things going on in the
world, we can piece together some interesting things.

In this case, anonymous is hinting that
WWIII is inching closer. Some people even believe it has already begun.
But you know what? I’m not sure we need to move into fear. First check
out the video, then read on.

"The last days have shown the enormous dangers journalists and fixers
are facing while covering the Mosul offensive and we know that many
freelancers, both locals and internationals, go to the frontlines
without proper combat medical training or equipment. For most
freelancers, medical safety training is too expensive and often hard to
access. By organising training initiatives such as this in Erbil we can
help equip freelancers for the dangers facing them in their work
environment. We are thankful to have organisations like Rory Peck Trust, Free Press Unlimited and North American Rescue supporting the project." - Osie Greenway, Director of The War Zone Freelance Project.

JOHN
PILGER: Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by
those with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia — and
with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the
Washington Post. These organisations are known as the liberal media.
They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the
moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.

Washington is in shock! FBI Director James Comey just sent a letter to
Congress informing Members that he was re-opening an investigation into
Hillary Clinton's use of a private server while Secretary of State.
According to Comey, new emails have surfaced requiring the Bureau to
re-examine whether classified information was released. The move is
highly irregular just days before a presidential election. Will this
bizarre race come to an even more bizarre finish?

Democracy, Hillary-style! Then-Senator Hillary Clinton caught on tape in
2006 telling the Jewish Press editorial staff that the US should not
allow Palestinian elections unless we "did something to determine who
was going to win." Listen to the audio at the link:

"A Decades-Long History Of Candidates Trying To ‘Rig’ Debates"

Candidates have always gamed the debate system to benefit themselves.

Notable excerpts:

"Neuman described the agreement as a “closed-door masterpiece.” The
“Memorandum of Understanding” demanded control over the selection of
panelists and moderators. It banned follow-up and candidate-to-candidate
questions, mandated control over audience selection and even required
approval of the moderator’s script, to prevent a repeat of Walters’
scolding of the candidates. To avoid the controversy that had erupted
four years earlier, the panel selection process would also remain
completely secret. The candidates also compelled the sponsor to set up a
direct phone line from the candidates’ dressing rooms to the producer,
who was able to speak to the moderator through an earpiece."

The
debates were meant to educate voters on issues rather than images, but
they have always been a matter of appearances. Over the years, various
solutions have been proposed to return them to matters of substance,
usually by tackling public campaign financing. Rep. Timothy Penny tried
to have the Democracy in Presidential Debates Act passed in 1991, which
would have created a non-partisan entity to sponsor the debates with
fairer criteria for including third party candidates, and required all
candidates who receive primary matching funds to take part in at least
two debates. The bill went nowhere.

In today’s era, when
campaigns are bankrolled by hundreds of millions of private dollars,
it’s a toss-up as to whether such a law would even be effective."

Reading
this article by John Pilger is like going to the optician: he twists
the lens and those blurred outlines of western foreign policy that we
had assumed were relatively benign suddenly come into sharp – and very
ugly – focus.

The EU-Canada summit where #CETA
was supposed to be signed today is cancelled! The fight is not over yet
as the Belgian government is still discussing a working document, but
today we will celebrate this victory already. And what better way to do
this than watching our trade campaigner Fabian Flues interviewed by Al
Jazeera yesterday. #StopCETA because Yes, We Can! http://www.aljazeera.com/…/eu-canada-ceta-trade-deal-saved-…